Build What Comes Next.
California-Based | Remote / Hybrid | Periodic New Jersey Travel · Full-Time · $95,000–$125,000 annually, based on experience, portfolio, and overall fit.
Firm Foundry is looking for a Creative Strategy Manager who can take ambitious ideas, sharpen them, structure them, and help turn them into real businesses, experiences, partnerships, and opportunities.
We are not looking for someone who simply executes a creative brief.
We are looking for someone who can help write the brief.
Someone who sees connections others may miss.
Someone who can move comfortably between strategy, culture, storytelling, technology, business, and execution.
If you naturally ask, “What else could this become?”, we should probably meet.
Ideas Are the Raw Material.
Ideas Are the Raw Material.
Firm Foundry is a brand marketing and concept lab. We find the idea hiding inside a business, a brand, or a problem, then build the plan, the partnerships, and the people it takes to make that idea real.
We work both coasts: hands-on in New Jersey, where it all started, and growing fast from our California hub.
Read the full story on our About pageCreative Strategy Manager
Creative Strategy Manager
The Creative Strategy Manager works closely with the founder to turn early-stage ideas, whether fully formed or just a conversation, into clear, executable strategies.
Your job isn't to say yes. It's to find what's strongest in an idea, refine what's weak, and move it toward execution. This is a highly visible role within a small, growing company.
This is not primarily a social media, graphic design, content creation, administrative project-management, traditional advertising, or pure account-management role. We may touch all of those areas, but your responsibility sits at the level of concept, strategy, and creative direction:
- What should we create, and why should it exist?
- Who is it for, and what makes it different?
- How does it create value, and how do we bring it to life?
Where Your Time Goes
Where Your Time Goes
Creative & Strategic Development
- Develop and refine concepts for businesses, brands, partnerships, experiences, campaigns, and new initiatives.
- Translate founder-level thinking into structured strategies and project frameworks.
- Develop creative direction around new business concepts and client opportunities.
- Help determine how ideas should be positioned, communicated, and experienced.
- Turn abstract concepts into presentations, briefs, treatments, proposals, and actionable plans.
Brand & Experience Strategy
- Help rethink how businesses present themselves and how customers experience them.
- Develop ideas across hospitality, education, culture, lifestyle, technology, community, entertainment, and other sectors.
- Create strategies that go beyond traditional advertising.
- Identify opportunities to reposition existing businesses or develop entirely new offerings.
- Help create experiences that can exist across digital, physical, social, cultural, and emerging-media environments.
Cross-Industry Partnerships
- Identify unexpected but commercially meaningful connections between businesses, organizations, creators, communities, and corporations.
- Develop partnership ideas that provide value to all participating parties.
- Help structure activations, collaborations, and shared experiences.
- Think beyond sponsorship logos and traditional brand placement.
- Ask what two organizations could create together that neither could create alone.
Client & Partner Communication
- Participate in client meetings and strategic conversations.
- Present ideas clearly and confidently.
- Help develop presentations, proposals, creative treatments, and partnership materials.
- Translate complex concepts into language that clients can understand and act upon.
- Represent Firm Foundry professionally with entrepreneurs, executives, collaborators, and community stakeholders.
Creative Oversight
Oversee creative projects from concept through delivery, collaborating with and directing outside specialists when needed:
- Designers
- Developers
- Filmmakers
- Photographers
- Content creators
- Producers
- AI specialists
- AR/VR developers
- Writers
- Researchers
- Experience designers
- Other creative and technical partners
You don't need to perform every discipline personally. You need to understand how the pieces fit together.
About You
About You
Roughly 4-8+ years of relevant experience (creative strategy, brand strategy, experiential marketing, innovation, hospitality, startups, or similar), though exceptional candidates with nontraditional backgrounds are strongly encouraged to apply. We care more about the way you think than the exact sequence of titles on your résumé.
You may be a strong fit if:
- You naturally connect ideas across different industries.
- You can hear an unfinished idea and identify the opportunity inside it.
- You understand that a beautiful idea must ultimately work.
- You can explain why an idea works, not just that you like it.
- You are comfortable disagreeing respectfully.
- You can improve an idea without needing to own it.
- You can move several ideas forward at once.
- You want real responsibility, not an inflated title.
You're also genuinely curious about emerging technology (AI, AR/VR, spatial experiences) and comfortable collaborating with the people who build it, though you don't need to be an engineer.
Small Team. Real Trust.
Small Team. Real Trust.
Firm Foundry is founder-led: the founder owns vision, relationships, and major strategic decisions, and this role exists to create leverage around that. Many ideas start informally, and you should be comfortable hearing something in its earliest form and helping shape it. Bring your own perspective. We're not looking for someone whose primary skill is agreement.
We've kept Firm Foundry intentionally boutique: fewer layers, more responsibility for the people inside it. We want someone who approaches the work with the ownership and strategic curiosity of a partner, even though this is a salaried leadership-track role, not an equity partnership. The goal is to build trust through the work.
That range is intentional: Firm Foundry is cross-industry by design, and we like people who can move comfortably between a hotel's relationship with its neighborhood and how AI might change a preschool.
$95,000-$125,000 Annually
$95,000-$125,000 Annually
This position is remote/hybrid and based in California, Firm Foundry's primary creative and innovation hub, alongside active businesses, partnerships, and projects in New Jersey.
Periodic travel to New Jersey is required and covered under Firm Foundry's travel policy. These visits are more than meetings: experiencing the businesses, people, and culture firsthand is part of the work.
Final compensation reflects experience, strategic capabilities, portfolio quality, and overall fit. Performance-based compensation may be added around clear objectives; equity is not part of the initial structure.
Forged Early. Built to Expand.
Forged Early. Built to Expand.
The first 90 days establish mutual fit while putting you straight into meaningful work: learning the Firm Foundry methodology, organizing current creative concepts, developing pitch materials, and helping prioritize what Firm Foundry should build first.
Success means Firm Foundry gets better at turning ideas into opportunities: developing stronger concepts, identifying valuable partnerships, and building a recognizable point of view.
Firm Foundry is young and moving fast, which creates real room for this role to evolve into broader leadership across creative strategy, client strategy, partnerships, and studio leadership. Advancement is based on contribution and demonstrated capability, not title.
This is a role for someone who wants to help build the machine, not simply operate one that already exists.
Interested?
We would like to understand both your experience and the way you think. Please submit:
- Your résumé or professional background.
- A portfolio, website, case studies, or examples of relevant work.
- A short introduction explaining why Firm Foundry interests you.
- One or two examples of projects where you helped turn an early idea into a strategy, campaign, experience, product, partnership, or business initiative.
Traditional portfolios are welcome, but they are not the only way to demonstrate your capabilities. We are interested in the thinking behind the work.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is this a fully remote position?
The position is remote/hybrid and California-based. Periodic in-person meetings, collaboration, and travel will be part of the role.
Do I need to live in Los Angeles?
Not necessarily. Candidates should be California-based and able to participate in in-person work as required.
How often will I travel to New Jersey?
Travel will depend on current projects and business needs. Some periods may require more immersion than others.
Do I need restaurant or education experience?
No. Our current businesses happen to be hospitality and education, but Firm Foundry is intentionally cross-industry. We care more about strategic and creative range.
Is this a design position?
No. Strong visual judgment is valuable, but you're not being hired to personally execute graphic design.
Is this an equity position?
No. This is a salaried role.
Will I manage people?
Initially, you'll direct outside creative and technical collaborators rather than a large internal team. Internal leadership may follow as Firm Foundry grows.
Is there room for advancement?
Yes. Firm Foundry is building its leadership structure, and the scope of this position can grow substantially based on performance and company development.
Equal Opportunity Statement
Firm Foundry is committed to building a team with different experiences, perspectives, disciplines, and ways of thinking.
We consider qualified applicants without regard to race, color, religion, sex, gender identity or expression, sexual orientation, national origin, age, disability, veteran status, or other characteristics protected by applicable law.
We encourage candidates with traditional and nontraditional professional backgrounds to apply.